After Albus left through his door, Lily walked almost blindly to bed. She walked right past a waiting Severus and James, as though they weren't there. She didn't want to face them. She couldn't decide what to do. Albus' suggestion was too much for her to handle. She was frightened of doing it, she was scared of her two men's reactions to the idea and she was terrified of how it would turn out. She felt that this way, she would lose both of them.
"What a mess!" she thought to herself.
Lily didn't go back to the Great Hall, just to her bed in the Gryffindor common room. She ignored Severus and James, whom followed her asking what Albus told her. They watched as she went through the portrait hole of the empty painting where the Fat Lady usually resided.
"What could he have said to her?" asked Severus worriedly, partly because Lily seemed upset and distressed and partly he dreaded that Albus' words may have boded ill for him too.
"No idea." replied James, feeling just as Severus did.
They both knew that when Lily didn't want to talk, it would be useless to try and disturb her, so together the two love rivals went back to the Great Hall to tell the others what had happened.
Lily lay in bed, pale and afraid of what Albus had said. She knew it was a way...the only way...but she was afraid of how her two true loves would react, and she felt that were too many things could go wrong and would effect her.
But she also knew that she had to tell Severus and James about what she and Albus had discussed. She couldn't tell them if she was going to be able to do it, but she had to at least let them know what the man they trusted to give a solution for their problem had suggested. At the same time, however, Lily felt she couldn't face them either.
After a few minutes, Lily made her plan. She sat up, raised her wand and pulled a blue liquid from her head and then whispered "Expecto Patronum." The doe Patronus appeared and it fused with the blue liquid and darted from the Gryffindor common room. Lily knew that soon Severus and James would know. And she pulled her bed sheet over her, waiting for them to come and see her.
The doe Patronus ran down to the Great Hall where James and Severus were being comforted by the Marauders, Tonks and Dobby. It stopped before them and beckoned them to follow where it was going.
"Let's go." said James, "It's Lily. She wants us to follow."
Severus didn't move. He sat on his bench looking straight at Lily's doe. It was so beautiful, just as Lily was. He was full of emotion that he could see Lily's own Patronus. It looked much better than his obsession based Patronus, full of sorrow, whereas this one was full of hope and joy.
"Come, Severus." said James, encouraging him to follow.
The doe seemed to understand as it looked away from Severus and began to stroll slowly away to its destination.
Severus, with something in the air of a hypnotism subject, followed it and James walked alongside. Remus and Sirius decided to let them go on their own. It was their destiny of their afterlife, their eternity, that the doe represented. Tonks and Dobby nodded in understanding.
Severus and James followed the doe, expecting it to take them back to Lily, but they also wondered why she didn't just come to them or why she sent the doe to take them to her; they knew where she was. But as they walked across the castle, they realised they weren't heading for the Gryffindor common room. They were being led to Albus' office.
"Why are we going back there?" asked James.
"Maybe she and Albus are back there?" suggested Severus, his eyes still fixed on Lily's Patronus.
